Pentagon Reverses Policy, Giving Names of Detainees to the Red Cross

U.S. Shifts, Giving Names of Detainees to the Red Cross

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 22, 2009


WASHINGTON — In a reversal of Pentagon policy, the military for the first time is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan run by United States Special Operations forces, according to three military officials.

The change begins to lift the veil from the American government’s most secretive remaining overseas prisons by allowing the Red Cross to track the custody of dozens of the most dangerous suspected terrorists and foreign fighters plucked off the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a major advance for the organization in its long fight to gain more information about these detainees. The military had previously insisted that disclosing any details about detainees at the secretive camps could tip off other militants and jeopardize counterterrorism missions.

Detention practices will be in the spotlight this week. The Central Intelligence Agency on Monday is to release a highly critical 2004 report on the agency’s interrogation program by the C.I.A. inspector general.

The long awaited report provides new details about abuses that took place inside the agency’s secret prisons, including C.I.A. officers carrying out mock executions and threatening at least one prisoner with a gun and a power drill.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/world/middleeast/23detain.html?_r=1

idiot son's Pentagon wouldn't allow the Red Cross anywhere near the detainees. Now that policy has changed to reflect common sense, maybe.

but it would mean that the policy during the Bush administration was to act stupidly.

and it shows how much the UK is out of touch on this issue.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/17-0